Sunset Beach

by Mary Kay Andrews

  * * *

  She was unlocking OJ in the law firm’s parking lot when her phone dinged. The text was from Ben.

  Still here. U coming?

  Can’t. She typed the word rapidly, then reconsidered. Why not go grab a burger with a couple friends from work? She did consider Ben her friend, and if she had to put up with know-it-all Jonah, so what? She didn’t feel like going home to Coquina Cottage and eating another solitary pizza by herself. God help her but she wanted to be part of the team. She x’d out the previous message and retyped, On way.

  * * *

  Ben and Jonah were seated at a table outside the wood-framed building, in the shade of one of the dozens of palm trees planted around the Chattaway’s deck area in old claw-foot bathtubs.

  “I’m telling you right now,” Jonah said, leaning across the table. “We had our best recruiting year ever. We’ve got defense, we’ve got offense, this is going to be the year of the Gator.”

  “Gross,” Drue said, pulling up a chair alongside Ben’s. “Football, again? Don’t you guys ever think of anything else?”

  Jonah waved to their server, who arrived tableside with a menu and order pad.

  “There is nothing else besides football,” Ben said, raising his glass and clinking it against his friend’s. “And gaming. And women. What took you so long? We were about to give up on you.”

  “Tell you in a minute. I’m starved.” She opened the menu. “What’s good here?”

  “Get the Chattaburger and onion rings,” Jonah advised, taking the menu and handing it back to the waitress.

  Drue frowned.

  “What? Oh, I get it, you’re a hippie east coast girl and you don’t eat meat, right?”

  He knew precisely how to get under her skin.

  “No, asshole. I just don’t feel like a burger tonight, okay? Is it all right with you if I order my own food, or do you need to tell me how to do that too?”

  She hadn’t eaten red meat in ages, but suddenly would have killed for a rare, juicy, greasy burger. Drue looked up at the server. “I’ll have a grouper sandwich. And a side salad.” She glared at Jonah. “And a glass of iced tea. Okay?”

  * * *

  “You were about to tell us what took you so long,” Ben prompted.

  “I got strung along with my 7-Eleven caller,” Drue admitted with a sigh. “I really thought I might have my first referral of the week. Right up until I asked her the question about an arrest. Which is when I heard crickets.”

  “Just as well,” Ben advised. “Brice hates slip-and-falls.”

  “Then why do we have billboards and ads for them on the side of every bus in town?” Drue asked.

  “Visibility,” Jonah said.

  “Too many of those clients are hoaxers,” Ben explained. “Even if we get a settlement, it’s nickels and dimes, because their injuries are rarely all that serious.”

  “Just remember, in the land of personal injury, the badder the injury, the better the case,” Jonah added.

  “So a wrongful death suit should be the best kind of case, right?” she asked.

  “You’d think so,” Ben said. “But the very best cases are severe, catastrophic injuries, especially if our client loses a body part, like an eye or a hand.”

  “Or a leg,” Jonah chimed in. “There are actuarial tables that tell you just how much lost limbs are worth.”

  “Botched circumcision cases are the real gold standard,” Ben added.

  “Don’t tell me any more,” Drue pleaded. “It’s too depressing.”

  “Like three years ago, Brice had a case where a utility truck hit our client’s car, and she was almost decapitated,” Ben said cheerfully.

  “Oh my God!” Drue pressed her hands over her ears. “No more!”

  “No, it’s okay. She lived. It took three years of investigating and negotiating, but I think that was like an eight-million-dollar settlement,” Ben said.

  “It was six million,” Jonah corrected.

  “Whatever, all I know is when the dust settled, he and Wendy got brand-new his-and-hers S-class Mercedes,” Ben said.

  Drue’s food arrived but her appetite had, not surprisingly, departed. She picked at her grouper sandwich and chewed slowly.

  “Speaking of cases,” she said, trying to sound casual. “I’m interested in the Jazmin Mayes case.”

  Ben raised an eyebrow. “Why?”

  “Because a young mom was murdered. Strangled and beaten, at a hotel less than a mile from where I live. I pass the Gulf Vista every day. I can’t believe that even happened. It’s been two years, and still no arrest? It bugs me that my dad settled that case for next to nothing.”

  “Yeah, it’s sad, but Brice can only try the case he’s been given,” Ben said.

  “Like I told you before, it’s a worker’s comp case,” Jonah said, sounding annoyed.

  Drue shook her head. “Have you ever met her mother? I have. I was working the reception desk when she came in last week. And Ms. Howington, that’s the mother, was adamant that Jazmin was killed after she clocked out. Not during. She didn’t work the overnight shift, because she needed to take care of her daughter so her mom could get to work early in the morning. You guys, she was only six when her mom was murdered. Her grandmother is raising her and working as a nurse’s aide at some hospital, and they can’t even afford to get the kid decent eyeglasses because the settlement will be in a trust for Aliyah until she’s eighteen.”

  She took a deep breath and stabbed at her salad. “It’s not right. It isn’t.”

  Jonah and Ben exchanged a knowing look.

  “You can’t get caught up in this stuff, Drue,” Ben said, his face earnest. “Everybody who calls, everybody who walks in the door, they all have a sob story.”

  “Or they think they do,” Jonah agreed.

  13

  After two weeks of camping out in her sleeping bag in the living room of the cottage, Drue was ready to start feathering her nest.

  By seven o’clock Saturday morning, she was unlocking her father’s storage unit. The hinges on the sheet metal door groaned as she pulled it open and flipped the light switch.

  “Score,” she whispered as she waded inside. The first things she hauled out to the Bronco were a queen-size mattress, box spring and bed frame. Sweating and cursing, she managed to shove them into the cargo area of the SUV. She returned to the unit and dug out a nightstand and two drawers from a dresser that she recognized as being Nonni’s, which completed her first load.

  Drue dragged the furniture, piece by piece, into the cottage, dumping everything in the bedroom, before returning to the storage facility for her next load.

  Three loads later, she’d barely made a dent in the contents of her father’s storage shed. She’d easily passed up the heavier, more opulent pieces in the shed, a black leather U-shaped sectional, an Asian-inspired teak entertainment center that took up six feet of wall space, and a commanding onyx-lacquered four-poster king-size bedroom suite. She reluctantly gave Wendy credit for banishing Brice’s fugly man cave furnishings to storage.

  Instead she’d settled for whatever could be dragged and shoved into the obliging OJ: a three-piece rattan settee and matching armchair that had been Nonni’s pride and joy, along with a boomerang-shaped Formica-topped coffee and matching end table. She’d found a pair of lamps, with their kitschy bullfighter-ceramic bases, and strapped them into the front seat, along with the settee cushions.

  For the last load she took a rickety card table and folding chairs. She remembered how Papi would set the furniture up in the living room for his Saturday-night poker games, and how Nonni would fuss about all the cigar smoke and beer bottles, but still spend the entire day before the game fixing sandwiches and cookies for the big event.

  In the years after her parents’ divorce, as she and her mother had moved to and from crappy apartments and rental houses in her youth, Drue had been mostly indifferent to her surroundings. Sherri wasn’t a nester, and neither was she. As long as their hom
e had beds, a sofa and a television—and later on, a place to store her kiteboarding gear—she’d been, if not exactly content, not exactly unhappy either.

  Now, though, Drue felt an absurd sense of satisfaction in “setting up housekeeping,” as Nonni would have put it.

  In a far corner of the storage unit she’d found some dusty cardboard cartons labeled KITCHEN STUFF in Sherri’s handwriting, and upon lifting the box flaps had been delighted to discover an assortment of battered pots and pans, silverware, utensils, and odds and ends of glass and china.

  Every night of the previous week she’d spent coating the interior of the cottage with white paint—it had taken three coats to cover the previous tenant’s color scheme.

  Late Saturday afternoon, after she’d moved all the furniture into place, she was sore and exhausted, but not too tired to make a Target run, picking out towels and bed linens, including a white and coral seashell-patterned quilt for her new bedroom, along with a shower curtain and a set of white cotton curtains for her bedroom window.

  Right before sunset, when she could work no longer, Drue shed her shoes at the edge of the dune, then picked her way through the sea oats, following the well-worn footpath until she reached the fringe of deep green Australian pines. It was nearly eight, but the sand was still warm. She sank down into the shade of the towering trees, leaned back on her elbows and stretched out her aching legs.

  The sun was only inches from the horizon, the sky glowing in fiery reds and oranges. A slight breeze rippled the fronds of the sea oats. The Gulf was calm tonight and the turquoise surface of the water rolled in lazy layers onto the shore.

  Looking down the beach she saw plenty of people prolonging their day by the water. Kids splashed in the surf, family groups unloaded picnics from coolers and couples strolled along the sand, stopping to embrace or take selfies.

  She was struck by how many of those couples were same-sex, mostly men. Sunset Beach had definitely changed over the years, and it wasn’t just the appearance of mega-mansions.

  Athletes were out too now, speed walking, running, riding bikes, lured back to the beach by the moderating temperatures. As she watched, a tall, particularly buff male specimen wearing only neon green shorts, whom she’d noticed several times in the previous week, made another sprint past. He stopped at the water’s edge, bent double, hands on his waist. Even from here she could see his bare torso slick with sweat. He had the muscled calves and lean, toned physique of a runner, and his hair was cropped so close he looked nearly bald.

  He straightened and turned, staring in her direction. She gave a curt nod and looked away, not wanting him to think she was ogling him. Although she was.

  Drue sipped from the bottle of beer Brice had left her in the refrigerator, and savored her hard-won sense of accomplishment.

  Back at the cottage, she stayed up ’til one, making up the bed, hanging the drapes and styling the bathroom. Then, she’d propped the box fan in the window and fell into a dead sleep.

  * * *

  She allowed herself the supreme luxury of a lazy Sunday morning, marked only by a trip to Publix to buy groceries. Now that she had a real kitchen, she’d vowed, no more convenience store sub sandwiches or roller dogs.

  After she got home from the grocery store, unloaded groceries and fixed herself a pitcher of iced coffee, it was after two. The beach was lined with hundreds of people who’d set up colorful umbrellas and beach chairs. Children splashed in the surf. She heard strains of music, and watched as the bald runner she’d seen over the previous week paused again at the water’s edge to catch his breath and drink from the metal flask he wore at his waist. She wondered idly if he lived nearby.

  Papi’s shed had yielded an ancient folding beach lounger, the kind with woven plastic webbing. She went back inside, changed into a bikini, tucked the Jazmin Mayes file in her beach bag and set the chair up in the shadows of the Australian pines.

  After a moment’s hesitation, she walked down to the water’s edge, letting her toes sink into the soft sand, feeling the turquoise waves lapping at her ankles.

  Drue set off walking to the south, stopping occasionally to tilt her face toward the sun, enjoying the sensation of sweat prickling her neck and shoulders and back.

  She still couldn’t get used to the inactivity of her new life, of sitting all day in an overly chilled cubicle, talking on the phone, typing, reading and assessing deadly dull legal documents. Her past life seemed like a dream now. Had she ever really spent her days skimming over the water on her board, living for those brief moments when her kite filled with air, taking her aloft? Even on the worst nights, when she was tending bar and fending off drunken good ol’ boys at Bozo’s, it had been worth it, because she knew that the next morning, weather permitting, she’d wake up and head for the beach.

  When she reached the rocky breakwater barely half a mile down the beach she was abruptly reminded of just why her life had taken such a dramatic turn. Her knee ached and she was already out of breath. Two months earlier, she would have happily scrambled over the rocks and kept going. Instead, she turned and started trudging back toward the cottage.

  Her thoughts turned again to Jazmin Mayes.

  She didn’t look up from her pondering until she was only a few yards from the cottage. Her lounge chair was now nearly obscured by the deepening shadows of the pines. Which was why she was startled to realize that someone was sitting in her chair.

  “Oh!” He jumped up as she approached. “Sorry, I, uh, well, sorry.”

  It was the shirtless jogger she’d been watching for the past week. He clutched his water bottle in his left hand and a damp shirt in his right.

  “That’s okay,” Drue said, laughing. “Don’t look so guilty. You must live around here. I see you running past here almost every day.”

  “Down there,” he said, pointing in the direction she’d just come from. “I’ve got a condo at Land’s End.”

  “Nice,” she said.

  “How about you?” he asked.

  She turned toward the dune line. “That’s my place. Up there.”

  “Really?” He looked surprised. “You’re the new tenant? What happened to Leonard?”

  “Leonard?”

  “The previous tenant. He’s lived there for, I don’t know, since before I bought my place, and I’ve been at Land’s End for seven years. Nice old guy.”

  “I figured it must have been a guy. He had some seriously questionable decorating taste. I’m actually not a tenant. I own the place.” She stuck out her hand. “Drue Campbell. First-time homeowner.”

  “Corey Wagner. Random beach jogger and chair usurper.” He shook her hand. “Welcome to Sunset Beach.”

  “Hey,” she said impulsively. “Wanna come up and have a drink on the deck?”

  “I’m not really dressed for cocktails,” he said.

  She grabbed her beach bag. “Me neither. C’mon up.”

  * * *

  By the time they walked onto the deck, he’d donned his shirt, unlaced his running shoes and left them at the edge of the dune line.

  “I do that too,” Drue said approvingly. “I love the beach, but I can’t stand tracking sand in the house.”

  “I’m compulsive about it,” Corey confessed. “Glad to know I’m not alone.”

  He followed her up the stairs to the deck.

  “Careful where you walk. Most of these boards are pretty rotten.”

  “Yeah, Leonard wasn’t much of a handyman,” Corey said. “And I gathered, from what he said, he was renting the place for such a bargain, he didn’t feel like he could ask the landlord to spend money to fix the place up.”

  Drue pushed the sliding door aside and walked into the kitchen with her new friend right behind.

  “Wow,” he said, pausing in the doorway. “What all did you do? This place never looked this good while Leonard was living here.”

  “A lot of white paint, a lot of Pine-Sol and a lot of trips to the Dumpster at that construction site up the block. Do
n’t tell the owners, okay?”

  She went to the refrigerator and got out a beer. He shook his head and grinned sheepishly. “I actually don’t drink. Anymore.”

  “Oh. Okay. Want a water?”

  “Brought my own,” he said, brandishing his stainless steel bottle.

  She put the beer back and poured herself a glass of white wine.

  “I don’t have any real deck furniture yet,” she said, stepping back onto the deck, “so these will have to do.” She pointed at the pair of folding lawn chairs she’d found in the shed.

  He unfolded both chairs and they sat, facing the beach.

  “So, Drue Campbell, pardon my nosiness, but what do you do that you can afford to own a swell cottage like this, right on the Gulf?”

  “I inherited it,” she said. “After my mom died. It had been my grandparents’.”

  “Lucky you,” Corey said. “But I can’t believe you didn’t want to live here yourself all these years, instead of renting it out.”

  “It’s complicated. My parents split up when I was about five years old, and I moved with my mom over to the east coast. After Nonni, that’s my grandmother, died, I just assumed my mom sold the cottage. But she didn’t. I guess my father agreed to manage the house for her, and he’s the one who rented it to your friend Leonard. That last hurricane did a number on the roof, hence that attractive blue tarp it’s sporting. And that’s when Leonard moved out.”

  “And you moved in,” he said. “From where?”

  “Lauderdale. After my mom died, I was sort of at loose ends, so when my father offered me a job at his firm, there was really no reason not to move back here. I had a free place to stay, and a job, so why not?”

  “I’ve always admired this house,” Corey admitted. “This past year or so, since Leonard moved out and the place was vacant, I had this far-fetched fantasy about buying it myself and fixing it up.”